


Not Perfect But Progress

by slasher48



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Ableist Language, Established Relationship, Food Issues, Jealousy, M/M, Neglect, Past Abuse, Post-Deposition, Slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 16:38:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7722055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slasher48/pseuds/slasher48
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He admits, if only to himself yet, that he'd give anything.</p><p><i>Anything</i>.</p><p>To keep that startled, ecstatic look on Eduardo’s face; <i>anything<i>.</i></i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Perfect But Progress

It wasn’t like this before.

Mark remembers. Eduardo probably doesn’t know. He maybe thinks Mark doesn’t _care_ – that this is just some kind of natural progression, that Mark is _growing up_ (and his loathing for that phrase is infinite; who the hell says older means better? Older is a pain in the ass sometimes.), and he just wants different things from Eduardo now.

He is never going to tell Eduardo differently. At least not until Sean has a wife, or a private island as escape from Eduardo’s wrath.

Because now it’s _this_ :

> Eduardo kisses him on the back of the neck and slips his fingers just barely beneath Mark’s sleeves, dragging them up in an almost massage Mark has come to expect and revere; Mark’s muscles loosen and his brain clears and Eduardo is there, he’s saying,

> “C’mon Mark, it’s past eight. We have to eat sometime, and you know I’m not going to cook two different things tonight. Just come home, even for an hour, and get some dinner in you.” Mark kicks his chair back and, even though he frowns a little involuntarily at the code left unfinished and the pile of things his assistant demands he actually _glimpse_ at before he puts his signature – and the considerable amount of money and power behind it – on them;

> Even though he loves the chair Chris’s replacement in PR bought him (he keeps forgetting that guy’s name; he’s not as hands-on as Chris and Mark never was the type for making friends);

> Even though it’s been weeks since he’s been late and he’s got some points saved up to cash in if he should so desire;

> All it takes is one look at the wary concern on Eduardo’s face, once defiant and overpowering, and he nods, reaching out to grip Eduardo’s arm a little too tightly and letting him lead.

> The food is warm, possibly even a bit hot, and it goes down smooth. Mark’s stomach accepts almost everything Eduardo makes, and he doesn’t forget – won’t let himself forget – to lean over and kiss Eduardo, to show some gratitude where Eduardo expects none.

> Sometimes he even curls close, cuddling distance, into Eduardo’s side on the couch afterward.

> It’s possible that he smiles in a way that would scare the person he was in college when Eduardo dips down, after Mark nods that he can turn on the Weather Channel – Mark never pays attention to television much anyway, to wrap himself around Mark and nudge his lips against his forehead.

> And when they sleep, sometimes after a slow make-out, sometimes after fast sex, sometimes after a long, hot shower together (depending upon when Mark last cleaned himself alone); when they sleep, Eduardo’s knee nudges at Mark’s side of the bed just as gently.

> Mark never pushes him away. He just hums something close to _love you_ and sleeps.

> It’s not perfect. But it’s progress, and he’s learning, and practice gets them close.

But then it was  _that_ :

> It’s after midnight and Mark is stiff all over; he loves that chair, but it’s deceptively comfortable, and only until he stands. Pretty much everyone but the security guard and that decrepit person in the blue who empties the trash cans is gone.

> Only in the parking lot does he blink almost-awake and realize that his car isn’t here; Eduardo was supposed to get him today. He vaguely remembers a flash of ridiculous, dark hair and a soft voice asking if Mark was ready before it was waved away. But he’s usually nicer to Eduardo than any other interruptions, so that was probably just the daydreaming Mark is not especially prone to (or up for admitting).

> He calls a car with the familiar and efficient, if outdated, cell phone in his pocket, and taps his flip-flops against the pavement until he can get inside and rest the too-angular, angry and tired parts of his body against the leather seats.

> After he’s keyed himself into the house, he calls for Wardo. No one answers, but as he’s coming up the stairs, the heavy footsteps turn him toward the room, their bedroom, that Eduardo has walked out of. Wardo’s rubbing his eyes with one hand, the other slung over his chest, a little tense, if Mark were any judge of those things. Probably just irritated at being woken up; Eduardo once smashed Mark in the face with a book before his eyes were even open when he nudged him too hard to roll over so Mark could sleep in his _own bed_ , too soon after a final.

> He looks drained, his body sagging but curled near the door, his eyes really blank, face a little wary. Mark doesn’t want to keep him up much longer than he has to be if he’s this miserably exhausted. If anyone knows the annoyance of _finally_ getting to sleep, only to be rudely pulled out of it, it’s Mark.

> “Hey,” he says quietly. “Nothing, I don’t want – just go to sleep, okay.”

> Eduardo shrinks a little further into the door and nods silently, glancing at him. He’s probably just cold, though; Eduardo likes it Harvard dorm temperatures in the house sometimes and if he can’t handle it, Mark isn’t going to be the one to change that for him.

> Eduardo’s about as far as he can get over to his side of the bed when Mark comes back from brushing the taste out of his mouth – so horrid it feels as though he _might_ have slept some without noticing a few hours ago – and crawls beneath the covers. He’s used to this temperature, he’s not really that cuddly, and Eduardo’s probably warmer over there; he doesn’t wonder if it’s something to do with what time it is.

> He’s never been the type to wonder those things, and anyway, Eduardo has never been the type not to bring them up, usually in furious tones, when they bother him.

> Eduardo mumbles something under his breath, but doesn’t speak when Mark asks what he said.

> Mark shrugs and goes to bed; maybe he’ll ask tomorrow, if he remembers.

Now it’s like:

> Mark is grumbling below any audible level as Eduardo drags him to a mini-golf course. He would be making much more noise about this abominably lame way to spend a Friday afternoon if Eduardo would just stop grinning so widely at the lurid purple ball in his hand.

> Purple balls. Eduardo is excited over _purple balls_.

> Mark dutifully follows him through windmills and glittering castles and annoyingly resistant obstacles (that seem to thwart Mark while allowing Eduardo to pass as though they were made of colored air, what the hell).

> “This course has it in for me, Wardo. Someone should design something more impartial.”

> Eduardo laughs, and throws over his shoulder, as they hop over the disgusting and probably disease-ridden moat (except Mark doesn’t, because of the aforementioned bias against him; his flip-flops are soaking wet and Wardo doesn’t even notice),

> “Should I get you that for your birthday, billionaire?”

> Mark stops in his tracks just before they reach the fifteenth hole, remembering a not-so-long-ago time when that particular epithet was layered upon layered with mocking and bitterness. When Mark would drink too much wine and maybe kiss a few investments goodbye with his alcohol-sharpened tongue because that was all Eduardo seemed to think of him then.

> His face must be showing something he’s not entirely comfortable with it showing, because Eduardo stops laughing when he looks over his shoulder a second time. He starts to turn back, but Mark just gives him a smile, he wants it to be a smile, and retorts,

> “You’re one too now, idiot – you don’t get to use that anymore.”

> Eduardo starts to laugh again, and Mark breathes a sigh of relief and forces himself to relax. He wiggles teasingly back into Eduardo a few times after that, critiques his technique with heavy emphasis on the sarcasm, and throws an entire bag of Fritos at his smug face when he says _not a design in the world could help your golf game, Mark_.

> Mark kisses him instead of mentioning the fact that saying _golf game_ aloud is showing how fucking old they’re getting; he’s pretty sure almost-sex on the picnic table beside the course (almost because Mark is not even trying to think about how many stupid people have done it before and actually gotten naked skin on the same wood where they lie) qualifies as juvenile enough to maintain their youth for today, anyway.

> The actual sex, up against the door, nipples peaking where their chests brush and groaning all over each other’s faces, coming in their pants before they even get them off (and Mark doesn’t care, he would have made a sacrificial fire of these disgusting golf-appropriate clothes otherwise, whatever), _definitely_ feels like they’re still young.

> Still, Mark proves it again to them both a few times, just in case there’s any doubt.

Then it was:

> “Hi,” Eduardo says, and it’s Friday, and Mark should be coding; there are _amateurs_ , people who possibly should even be fired from Facebook, looking through what he’s done and trying to add on to it. There are people who are _not him_ looking through his code, and Eduardo’s face is kind of nice today, but that’s not the point.

> Chris said that Eduardo wanted him to come home, so he’s home, Christ, and what does Eduardo say? What’s so important? _Hi_.

> “Wardo, this is not necessary. Chris is being ridiculous as usual and I have a lot of work to do, so can you just greet me after everything is done, finished, and we’ll do this then?”

> Eduardo’s face kind of stops, and Mark rolls his eyes. Eduardo’s going to be a drama queen again; just like the other day when Mark caught him scoffing under his breath at the laundry hamper. As if anything _laundry_ involves could be worth that kind of effort.

> “I just thought – I mean, it’s been a while, and there’s a movie you might like, Mark, here –”

> Mark is surprised and pleased by the lack of unfortunate yelling he remembers from these kinds of discussions; he takes the newspaper Eduardo hands him, humoring him for this.

> “You cannot honestly be expecting me to go through an evening with you and this _deformity_ of culture, Eduardo, -- just, you cannot be that stupid. Okay, I know you’re into this kind of weird mediocrity, but.”

> Eduardo opens his mouth and then closes it, and looks away. He smiles in this way Mark doesn’t really understand, a way that’s not what usually constitutes an Eduardo smile, and nods.

> “I know, Mark. I know Facebook is important—”

> “Not just _important_ , Wardo, the _most important_. There are so many things going on right this minute that I need to oversee, and whatever, the social part of it I could do without, but I have to be there, I’m _CEO_.”

> “Bitch,” Eduardo mutters, and now he’s not even smiling that weird one; his face is turned down to the laptop he put down (working as hard as Mark, always, kind of hypocritical if you ask him) when Mark arrived, though, so it might be the lighting. Mark’s confused again.

> “Listen, we can do this another night, okay? Not that movie, not _ever_ that movie, I can’t – we’ll see that action thing we were laughing at on Dustin’s page. Later.”

> Mark doesn’t give Eduardo much chance to object, but the way he waves, kind of _get out of here_ attached to it, means he wants Mark to go, right?

> Mark goes. Facebook needs him right now.

> Eduardo will be there later.

It’s:

> Mark’s simmering under his skin as Eduardo finishes this month’s _Economist_ , his laptop humming in a very uncomfortable way above his dick that’s waking up around the time it usually does; he’s attuned to Eduardo’s scent now, and how Eduardo’s sock rubs on his ankle if one of them have a bit of an itch. He notices more than ever how, when Eduardo’s fingers tap his wrist so he’ll look over and they can both laugh at what fucking bastards run the economy sometimes, it makes his belly warm and twisted-feeling.

> He realizes what it _is_ now when Eduardo licks his fingers the way he used to (in Harvard, and he hated it; he used to carry tissues in his shirt pockets to maintain the propriety of dry fingertips, as if a single fucking person cares), goes to turn the page, and then rubs the moisture off unthinkingly against Mark’s ratty sweatpants before it can stain his reading material; what it means when Mark’s throat closes up a little bit and he searches intently for all the skin Eduardo’s showing, just a tease, just a taste.

> He recognizes and kind of loves the _swoop_ in his chest and the way he can’t help but squirm, when he pauses, licking his lips, and his stare runs head-on into a face crinkled with amusement and eyes narrowed and blackened with interest. He jerks so that things are saved and his computer can be closed, and most times, all he has to do is that before Eduardo mauls him and starts licking at his bottom lip in a way that means Mark tries and fails not to writhe.

> And he revels in the part where Eduardo slows down after the first rush. He likes the fact that Eduardo makes teasing faces at him as he’s taking off his clothes, and that when Mark’s hips jump because Eduardo is the _best_ tease this side of the fucking planet, he pauses to laugh and look down with an intense focus that rivals even Mark’s. It always makes him _scream_ when Eduardo goes slowly, agonizingly so. He licks and he nibbles and he pokes at the softest, most sensitive parts of Mark’s dick, and Mark isn’t allowed to do anything but shut up and take it, his fingers making the strangest sign language known to man as his stomach tightens up like he drank a bottle of Beck’s too fast. Mark isn’t allowed to do anything but squeeze his eyes shut and beg – for more or less, for _now_ or _not yet_. Mark never knows, and Eduardo doesn’t ask which he wants.

> He just gives, all this attention and this adoration in the ways he moves his lips, his tongue, his whole fucking wet, smooth _mouth_ , and when Mark comes, he swallows, every single time; Mark is rarely coherent enough to warn him, but he’s talked about it before (and he’s fucking old enough not to blush the way he did, _fuck_ ) and neither of them swallow out of obligation.

> The kiss Mark always attacks him with is never that kind of bullshit, either. Mark licks what’s left of him from Wardo’s tongue and he groans, and he asks with his eyes closed, still pressing close-mouthed kisses on that soft, strong jaw, what he can give back.

> He admits, if only to himself yet, that he’d give anything.

>   
>  _Anything_.

> To keep that startled, ecstatic look on Eduardo’s face; _anything_.

But it was:

> The best part of Wardo is that he always wants sex. Mark will wake up in the morning and roll over and duh, he’s hard, like Mark, because it’s _the morning_. But he’ll make a snuffled moaning noise, and he has never said no. He always hisses a little with the first finger, but never tells Mark he’s _busy_ or _upset_ or _has a headache_ ; all that bullshit Sean tells him about being in a relationship and the sex going stale is obviously directly from his cache of _zero_ experience. (It’s kind of awesome that Mark _has_ said experience when Sean doesn’t. Sometimes he likes to flash Eduardo’s prettiness and charisma in front of Sean as a _ha-ha_ , so he can be the one people roll their eyes at in envy, for once.)

> Today Eduardo’s in the laundry room, and almost nothing’s clean, so he’s basically walking around in the most raggedy boxers (read: flawless) he owns. Mark couldn't give less of a fuck about sartorial concerns, but he might start investing in underwear stock if Eduardo gets to be this fucking tempting in them.

> Mark doesn’t have the heart to tell Eduardo he has a maid who used to do (and sometimes still does) the household chores he’s so intent on finishing. He figures he’ll get the message that Mark wants to fuck and leave them, anyway. He’s always up for good sex (and it has to be good, because Eduardo never complains, and regularly falls asleep right after).

> Mark has to go to work in a half hour (read: is _scheduling himself_ for then) and Eduardo is fucking hot, and he’s Mark’s, and pretty soon, he’s on his back. Eduardo makes a face of protest, but it’s probably just the cold metal of the washer underneath him. Mark rubs his back a little, fixing that fast, and bites down the side of his neck, leaving purpling and sore bruises that make him feel like _the man_ for having them all over someone like Eduardo. He reaches into the basket where Wardo keeps things like _fabric softener_ , what, and grabs for a sticky tube, not that well-used in this venue yet (but Mark means to change that). Eduardo shivers a little and wiggles out of his boxers, making a motion when his bare ass feels the cold that’s kind of funny and glancing up at Mark without much reproach when he laughs. (It’s funny; Eduardo only usually gives him looks like that when things are unfunny, anyway.)

> Mark prepares Wardo haphazardly, but they went at it yesterday for hours, so they should be good, and Mark doesn’t have the time; he’ll make tonight a quiet night to make it up. Grunting quietly as he does the part that requires his increasingly impatient cock, he lifts Eduardo’s long, limber legs and moves himself between them, and – luckily for Eduardo – starts slipping into the glove-like warmth just as the washer starts rocking a bit.

> Eduardo moans, hard, when Mark shifts his hips and rubs himself into him, grinds against his body and hits, he thinks, Eduardo’s spot. Mark laps at some sweat on Eduardo’s shoulder and starts fucking for all he’s worth, kind of jerky and uneven as he starts to _get there_.

> It always takes that part where Eduardo clenches around him and starts babbling, biting off his words, “I – ah, I will – oh, shit –” before he grabs Eduardo’s thighs with nails digging in, clenches his teeth hard enough to chip them, and chokes a mumbling low moan in his own throat as he comes. The condom is going to have to go someday, but he figures he’ll get that eventually, and until then, it’s not like the sex _sucks_ , or anywhere near that. Eduardo’s the best anybody could ever get, and Mark knows that so damn well, _so_ well, as he’s pulling out and Eduardo’s not making faces at him for making a mess or griping that he’s not getting his this time, just making a bit of a frustrated face and then rubbing his hair back off his forehead, watching Mark.

> “It’s time for me to leave, but I can—” He steps forward anyway, because it’s kind of one of the greatest parts of this to see Wardo come, even if it’s always better to _feel_ than see. Eduardo shakes his head a little, pushes himself up, and tugs his boxers on. Mark shrugs and starts to leave but at the kitchen doorway, he hears,

> “Uh, Mark –”

> He turns and Eduardo’s looking kind of tired, even if he’s giving Mark a small, private smile like he always does; it’s a smile only Mark ever sees, and he doesn’t want it shown to anybody else. He’s rubbing his arms a little, his eyes dropped low, to right around the bulge at his waist, actually. Eduardo shakes his head when Mark makes a sharp wave-like motion with his hand, indicating he should go on, just shrugs and itches his wrist, mutters,

> “You’re going to be late. Have a good day and…and. I know you will.”

> Mark smiles back – it’s just a regular smile, he’s not even sure _how_ to do special ones – and waves a little, a goodbye, even a _you too_ , before rushing out the door. Wardo is _definitely_ the greatest.

Somewhere in between, Mark canceled something, he doesn’t always remember the specifics, and Eduardo showed up at Facebook, jerked back a little, because Sean was there and they were toasting with Mark’s favorite beer to Mark’s favorite accomplishment. He licked his lips and said, quiet, that he  _had_ planned this for a week, but the restaurant was there and it would be then, and Mark had priorities, he understood. Then he left, and Mark blamed the bubbly feeling in his stomach on his second Beck’s, on the residual nausea some of Sean’s more colorful stories stirred up in him as always.

And he’ll never forgive himself for that, for the fact that  _noticing_ , noticing  _Wardo_ , took Sean saying,

“So  _that’s_ why you’re all hyped up on the relationship thing. Never really figured you for that kind of guy, Mark, but I guess another breed of puppy dog wouldn’t have rolled over like he does for your  _favorite_ part, right?”

Mark winked back at Sean when Sean winked at him, but he was confused. He had spent most of the last two and a half years confused, discovering more and more that learning the basics of awareness to survive as a CEO still left an annoyingly long road to the point where he was considered to have a  _normal_ understanding of all the emotional shit people thrived on.

“I thought about getting a dog,” he said, wondering what the fuck tangent Sean was on this time.

Sean looked at him out of the corners of his eyes – snake eyes, Mark’s mother had said of them, a little disapproving but already resigned to Sean’s place in Mark’s life even then – and snickered, but it was off; it wasn’t the usual Sean snicker. Mark applauded himself the way he did sometimes, fifty-fifty these days, for figuring that out, and then still missed the point of why.

Until Sean laid it out in black and white, as Sean would rarely do. Mark got lucky (the luckiest) that once.

“You don’t really need one anymore, though, do ya, now Wardo’s learned his place. He’ll trot up for petting, fetch you food, and heel when you’re not in the mood for company – and won’t even dump on the carpet, which is good for you, dude, because I know you and cleaning, you’d be  _fucked_ and everything’d smell heinous at your place.”

“Shut up, Sean. You burned away your ability to smell a long time ago, so whatever, you shouldn’t even care.” Mark shot back, used to the back-and-forth they were into now, but he wasn’t focused on Sean’s sleaze this time, or even the coolness that overlaid said sleaze and still fooled Mark once in a while.

He was thinking about how  _easy_ Eduardo was now, how everything always seemed perfect because nothing less than that ever came up, nothing ever  _changed_ – how Mark wondered all the time what Wardo was thinking or feeling when he didn’t say something or didn’t touch Mark first, but he never asked because it was so much  _easier_ that way. He was remembering the sharp glance at Sean Eduardo hadn’t managed to hide when Mark let him walk out; feeling like a fucking moron who didn’t deserve to be  _CEO, bitch_ because there were literally thousands of those stored up in the  _Wardo_ file in his brain that he had put away for further examination and never actually done anything about.

He was feeling like Sean was  _right_ , and that, as it was, was cause for alarm, even without the other part.

“I just thought you guys always seemed like the tension worked for you, like that was the sexy bit of it. But hey, I’m not knocking what I haven’t tried, man. More power to you.”

Mark blames the shock, now, for what he said then, a blurted, almost  _whimpered_ curse,

“No,  _fuck_ power. Fuck power and fuck dogs and fuck Wardo, what the hell.”

Sean was used to the way Mark left sometimes in a way Wardo had never gotten, so he barely blinked except to smirk way too fucking knowingly (that was simultaneously the best and the worst part of Sean: the  _knowing_ ) at him when Mark put down his bottle and stalked out of the office like he was going  _toward_ instead of  _away_ from the center of his pride-and-joy life project (and said project was on fire).

He knows, and Eduardo is never going to – no matter where they get in relation to perfect, that he shook a lot, almost enough to tilt his car off of the road, and his face was wet, and the overbearing disgust he still often felt for so much of everybody  _else_ turned the most painfully inward it had ever done in his life.

What Eduardo knows is that Mark shoved through the door, yelled for him, insisted that fucking restaurant better accommodate them  _now_ , and then ducked into the bathroom to get ready for the ever-dreaded night out at the stuck-up white tablecloth kind of place Eduardo loved.

> It’s a failure Mark will not ever accept in himself, the way he felt that day, and he doesn’t, he never accepts it, never earns it, not intentionally, not anymore.

> He knows things. He knows Eduardo can take his words as incendiary but he burns behind his quiet exterior now, rather than explodes. Mark pokes and prods, but Wardo’s not dynamite anymore, and the seething is hurtful, but it actually works a little better for them.

> He knows that sometimes Eduardo doesn’t want sex, doesn’t even want Mark around, and that just as he likes to rid himself of _everybody_ , even including Wardo, sometimes, he has to back the fuck off then. It’s hard, because backing off is even more torturous than it was, now that Mark knows he can’t fuck this up, _cannot_ fuck Wardo up.

> He knows that Eduardo likes the Weather Channel more than is healthy, but that he keeps it running constantly on his laptop and gets regular updates, so if Mark should be inclined to interrupt the strange and mystifying peace Eduardo finds watching it to see another _Scarface_ rip-off, Eduardo will chuckle, but oblige. Mark rarely does it, but he knows he can, that it’s not the way it used to be when he didn’t care.

> He knows that Eduardo finds it kind of silly to celebrate birthdays at their age, but that Brazilian desserts from recipes his mae sends are acceptable alternatives to parties (which, good, because Mark _likes_ learning languages to thank Wardo’s mom and unequivocally _hates_ parties) – especially if parts of those desserts are smeared somewhere on Mark’s body.

> He knows that Eduardo says _I love you_ in his language (that he doesn’t yet know is also Mark’s) because he’s terrified Mark will someday hear it when he doesn’t want to, and Eduardo will lose the privilege of ever hearing it back again. Mark is waiting until he stops getting that look on his face to tell him he knows what he’s doing, though.

> He knows that Eduardo could be someone else’s, that he gets offers, even if he only tells them to Mark because he’s scared Mark will find out another way and be upset with him for secrets, and that Mark is fucking _lucky as hell_ to both have and have _kept_ Eduardo this long.

> He knows that Wardo is still as insanely jealous of Facebook as he is of Sean, but that going home for dinner unprompted and stealing Wardo’s idea for long, slow blowjobs afterward kind of does the trick to get all that bullshit envy out of him, like some sort of sexual surgery.

He knows that all Eduardo wanted – all he ever  _did_ want after the depositions, after he stepped forward to apologize, like he had learned he had to (while Mark was still,  _is_ still learning that) and shrank back when Mark just nodded, answered without any offering of his own, and asked him out on a date (as friends if he wasn’t willing to fuck Mark, but he’d kind of like that too, if that was cool); all he ever coveted was Mark’s attention and affection (again) in any form.

He knows that both of them went about making that happen the worst way possible, and he’s guaranteed to himself – the way he someday will to Eduardo – that they’re  _never_ succumbing to that kind of ignorance again.

And it’s not perfect, it won’t ever be, but it’s progress, and he’s learning, and they’re practicing. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was deleted with the Fic Meme (and I never noticed, because it's been a while), so I don't remember what people thought of it or who I dedicated it to. If you have that page somehow saved somewhere, please feel free to contact me.


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